The Jesus Effect

[root_fu]

Comments

[abhorrious]

you know, this is actually pretty fascinating to read, gives you a lot to think about.

[root_fu]

Much thx.

[morgue_n]

The Jesus Effect occurs when people stop living for themselves and become an Idea. Whether they (or a team of marketing geniuses) consciously make the decision to do this or not does not matter.

When Michael Jackson died I couldn't help but think that, had this been ancient Greece, they would have turned him into a constellation.

http://petewarden.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/04/23/constellation.png

see that big, bright one up there? That's his glove.

[root_fu]

Awesome.

I wouldn't mind an epic Michael Jackson story to go along with it.

[stephantom]

I hardly think it's one of the worst tendencies humanity has. People do good things for personal reasons. Ok. If they're still doing good things, I don't care. If they're inspiring other people to do good things -- even if it's out of some weird hero-worship or out of a weird competitiveness to copy them and become an even better messiah-figure and be adored even more, whatever. It's better than all of us saying, "Wait a minute, that's pretentious! Let's just own up to our assholeness and wear it on our sleeves and do what we want with no regard for other people."

[root_fu]

It may not be one of the worst, but its certainly better than blaming someone or something else for being misled, maybe. :D

[tabular_rasa]

I don't think there's anything wrong with being an idealist-- and while it gets messy when one's ideal is embodied in an inevitably flawed human being (probably due to the fact that many people deal better in the concrete than the abstract) I still think that if an ideal inspires good, it's better to have a flawed ideal than no ideal. Plus I doubt it's going to change, either, at least not without a lot of overriding training. It's like asking people to stop diffusing responsibility or be less obedient to authority; it can't be done without immense conscious effort because it's part of our social psychological nature. People need something (or, if they prefer the concrete, someone) to believe in.

Plus the trouble isn't so much the initial idealization of a person, but the disintegration of it when our the image of our ideal is tainted by the ideal's actual humanity. We live in an interesting era in that regard, because historically (such as in the time of Jesus, Buddha, etc) we had little to no idea the leaders and other god-like

[root_fu]

I disagree with everything you said. (:

[harehare]

this should be posted to silly_religion, lol.